http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2008/aug/17/bookmonger-trailblazer-in-northwest-politics/
Appeared August 17, 2008, in the Kitsap Sun, the Olympian and other Washington community newspapers. 

Bookmonger: Trailblazer in Northwest Politics Pens Memoir

By Barbara McMichael
With our primary election coming up early this year (next Tuesday — don’t forget to vote!), I thought it would be appropriate to look at a book about politics this week.

Perhaps you already know that 2010 will mark the centennial of women’s suffrage in Washington — in 1910, ours was the fifth state in the union to grant women the right to vote.

Our neighbor state to the south followed suit two years later.

Now “With Grit and By Grace,” the autobiography of one remarkable Oregon woman who has been a political force for the last half century, tells one of the many stories that have contributed to the rising trajectory of Northwest women in significant civic engagement.

Betty Roberts began her life in politics as a precinct committeewoman in 1960. She went on to become a school board member, a state legislator, a candidate for governor, and Oregon’s first female Supreme Court Justice. After retiring from the Court she embarked upon a new career in arbitration and mediation. In 2004, she performed the state’s first same-sex marriage ceremony.

But the story of her commitment to overcoming obstacles to women’s equal rights begins well before that, with Roberts’ childhood in Depression-era Texas.

She was born Betty Lucille Cantrell in 1923. When she was just six, her father succumbed to paralysis — he was one of many to be poisoned by drinking a certain bootleg liquor during Prohibition.

From then on, Betty’s mother was the breadwinner for the family, and Betty learned from her how to be pragmatic and work hard through very tough times.

It was that practicality that convinced Betty to quit college at the age of 19 and marry a serviceman who not only promised to take care of her but also to get her out of dreary Texas.

Fourteen years, a move to Oregon, and four children later, that same sense of pragmatism propelled Betty back to school, where she figured she could get a teaching degree to help support her growing family.

But this was the 1950s, and Betty’s husband resisted the idea that she would work outside of the home. Once she landed a teaching job, though, she had her mind made up. If she had to choose between work and marriage, work won out.

“By Grit and By Grace” describes the phenomenal changes that were taking place in Oregon and throughout the Northwest at the time.

As a lawmaker, Roberts was instrumental in passing legislation that legalized abortion in Oregon, and that allowed a woman to decide on her own name rather than accept her husband’s surname. Roberts was a force behind Oregon’s ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment, and was also involved in some of her state’s groundbreaking environmental laws.

Women in Washington are well placed at all levels of government. It might be easy to feel complacent about their progress in politics.

But Roberts’ lively and forthright memoir demonstrates that, for women everywhere, those gains were hard-won.

[From Oregon State Bar]

A “Tell-Enough” Memoir
Chronicle of a 20th Century Pioneer
By Ira Zarov, May 2008

In 1955 Betty Roberts, now known as Justice Betty Roberts, was a 32-year old banker’s wife, a housewife with four children, living in LaGrande, Ore. That year, she had taken the radical step for a woman of her generation and had enrolled, over the objections of her traditionalist husband and skepticism of her friends, in Eastern Oregon College. In her first semester, her professor suggested that she write a paper on pioneer women of the Northwest, having noted earlier that in the cemeteries along the trail the graves of women and children far outnumbered those of men. It was a prescient suggestion, as Betty Roberts would become a remarkable 20th century pioneer woman. She would finish her education, continue on to law school, become a state representative, a state senator, run for the U.S. Senate, and become the first woman appointed to the Oregon Court of Appeals and the Oregon Supreme Court. She would do these things at a time women were not welcome in legislative chambers or judicial chambers. She would face blatant and intentional discrimination and subtler, but no less pernicious, institutional sexism. She would carve out a career in public service filled with accomplishments and, along with a small group of other women, political pioneers themselves, change Oregon politics.

Justice Roberts’ memoir is a vivid history of the coming of age of the women’s movement, a history that should celebrated and read and understood by everyone who now benefits from the contributions of women in the law, in politics, and in every other field.

Justice Roberts does not offer a tell-all memoir, although there are occasional intimations that if she chose to do so, there would be plenty to tell. It is a tell-enough memoir. Justice Roberts candidly, directly and forcefully tells enough to make clear that the sexism of the ’50s through ’80s was a virulent and destructive force; that prejudices ruled the worlds of law and politics (and the rest of the world as well); and that overcoming them was a day-to-day battle won through, as she describes it “grit and grace,” plus hard work, intelligence and determination.

The memoir is exceptional as both a telling of the growth of the women’s movement and as a history of Oregon politics through the latter half of the 20th century. The world that Justice Roberts enters in 1965 as a first-term member of the Oregon House of Representatives was a world filled with discrimination. The newspaper coverage of the opening of the 1965 session printed pictures of the few women legislators on the society page. In 1968, when Justice Roberts married attorney Keith Skelton, the Oregon State Bar insisted on listing her as “Betty R. Roberts Skelton,” despite her request that she keep the Roberts name. When she protested it was suggested she sue the OSB. The register of elections informed her that they would not issue her a voter registration card unless she registered as Betty Roberts Skelton, despite the fact that on the ballot for her House Seat she would be appear as Betty Roberts. In 1969, The Oregonianinsisted on referring to her as “Mrs. Betty Skelton,” not “Sen. Roberts.” A threatened lawsuit changed the view of Richard Nokes, The Oregonian’s editor, about the wisdom of his policy. Justice Roberts won these battles, but they are illustrative of the discrimination, large and small, that she and other women faced.

As a member of the legislature, both in the House and later the Senate, Justice Roberts worked on and was instrumental in the passage of numerous bills affecting women. Among them were abortion rights, employment discrimination statutes, the right of a woman to keep the name of her choice regardless of marriage, public accommodations laws and many others. She also worked on many of the legislative initiatives for which Oregon is famous, the bottle bill and the public beaches legislation among them.

Justice Roberts’ narrative of her time in the Oregon legislature is not confined to her experiences with discrimination. As her experience grew she became an effective, canny, and forceful legislator, and she is adept at explaining the legislative process as it occurs in real time, providing insights into the relationship between lobbyists and legislators, the caucuses, the majority and minority parties, and how legislative power is acquired and used.

After 12 years in the state legislature, in 1977 a Democratic governor appointed Justice Roberts to the Oregon Court of Appeals. She would be the first woman to sit on an Oregon appellate court. She writes that she knew from her time in the legislature, and her work as a teacher and lawyer, that she was as able as the men she encountered and was eager to take on a new challenge. But in her words, “I had no inkling just how much of a challenge it would be.”

In some respects the discrimination, both direct and indirect, that Justice Roberts initially faced as an appellate judge is more surprising than her experience as a legislator, if for no other reason that it was these judges who were empowered to enforce the employment discrimination laws, the domestic violence protections, and other protective legislation that the had been recently passed. Justice Roberts also makes clear that her difficulties were not with all members of the court, although as an institution the court was hostile toward her appointment, starting with legendary Chief Judge Herb Schwab.

Justice Roberts describes a whole range of discrimination, from the subtle (i.e., many judges and court staff didn’t respond to even general niceties), which was merely bothersome, to direct and significant discrimination that interfered with her ability to function effectively. At case conferences she describes “you-are-not-present” discrimination, which she acknowledges is “one of the cruelest forms, for it makes one nonexistent.” It came in the form of the chief judge’s refusal to ask her about draft opinions, declaring discussions done before she had an opportunity for input and moving to the next case.

It is here that readers will be able to get the measure of Justice Roberts and why she filled her role as social pioneer so well. She simply started to speak up, to give her opinion and when necessary, to delay opinions by declaring she would write a concurring opinion. But her explanation of how she did it is illuminating: “It was important for me not to act out of pique or retaliation, or frivolously or aggressively. …I patiently waited for the men to learn that I worked the same way they did and that…at all times — I expected to be heard.”

As time progressed Justice Roberts became accepted as a member of the court, including by the chief judge, and in 1981 Republican Gov. Vic Atiyeh appointed her to the Oregon Supreme Court. There she happily describes a different experience where the makeup of the court encouraged collegiality and respect and valued diversity.

As the sheer number of important Oregon political names that she has encountered indicates — the iconic Tom McCall and Mark Hatfield, Vera Katz, Norma Paulus and Bob Packwood among them — Justice Roberts’ memoir is a valuable contribution to Oregon history during a particularly turbulent period. The memoir is also a record, not to be forgotten, of how difficult was the fight for the opportunities women in law and in other professions now enjoy.

Throughout the memoir Justice Roberts is candid and direct and respectful of the institutions in which she worked and the people with whom she worked. She has a sense of irony that entertains. She is honest about her personal life, her friendships and her mistakes. One caveat: Readers who hoped that the book would help them finally discern exactly who is who among Oregon’s various political Roberts will face disappointment.

Few public figures’ accounts of their lives are particularly honest, compelling or worthwhile. Roberts’ memoir is all of these—and more. “In today’s world,” she writes, “every woman should be able to explore her own life, discover her own uniqueness, break her own trails, and pioneer her own destiny.” Betty Roberts has walked that talk. More important, she’s spent a fascinating and important career in public life working to make that promise a reality for all women in Oregon, benefiting most of the rest of us along the way.

[From the Statesman Journal]

Roberts broke down barriers for women

State’s first female court justice shares her story in a new book

By Peter Wong, published June 9, 2008

Betty Roberts has blazed a number of Oregon trails.

At age 32, already a mother, she returned to college — and then got a law degree at age 43.

One of the first women to get involved in state politics, Roberts mounted the first serious campaign for governor and then was thrust into a race for U.S. senator the same year. She is best known for being the first woman on Oregon’s appellate courts.

She has just published a memoir, “With Grit and By Grace,” with Gail Wells.

Question: Why did you choose to write this book?

Answer: The book was written to tell the story of my own experiences during the time women were struggling to find their own identities and to relate the achievements of the women’s movement (the so-called second wave) through the Oregon legislative process, beginning in the late 1960s and continuing to my time on the appellate courts. So much is taken for granted now about women’s advances that I felt it important to give in some historical detail how those advances were achieved.

Q: Why now?

A: This book has been “in progress” for some years. I first wrote about my childhood for a family reunion in the 1990s, and it went on from there. It took so long because I wanted to live in the present with my family and friends, with my mediation and arbitration work, with my personal interests in golfing and quilting, but do the research and write on what had gone before as well. With 800 pages of manuscript I finally decided to find a professional writer to help me make it publishable. Gail Wells was just the right person. With her regular urgings and considerable talents, it was published. It is only a bit of fate — or perhaps grace — that it has been published at the time the first woman who has a chance of being president of the United States is running for the Democratic nomination.

Q: What was it like for you to return to college in the 1950s, after World War II and parenthood? What prompted you to make the decision?

A: For many of my friends and for my husband, it was an audacious move to return to college; for me it made perfect sense. I feared I’d have no way of supporting my four children should something happen to their father, as had happened to mine when I was a child. My mother had to support our family of five during the Depression by taking in washing, and life was very hard for all of us. I remembered all of that very clearly and I would not relive it simply because I did not have an education.

Q: How did your time in college, particularly after you transferred to Portland State (College/University), lead you to an interest in politics and your eventual participation?

A: The courses I liked most were in the social sciences, particularly political science and history. It may have been the stimulus of a latent interest because of my family’s personal experiences in receiving assistance under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal programs that ultimately got us out of poverty by providing jobs for people like my mother. It, unquestionably, was due to some very fine professors — Lee Johnson, professor of U.S. history at Eastern Oregon College; Marko Haggard, professor of political science at Portland State College, and Ben Padrow, my speech teacher and debate coach at Portland State College. All of them taught that we learn by doing — getting involved and making a difference.

Q: Compare your initial involvement in politics during the 1960s with your observations about how women fare in politics today? What obstacles did you face that are no longer obstacles today? What obstacles remain? What advantages, if any, are there?

A: I first served in the Oregon House in 1965. In 1968 I ran for the Oregon Senate against an entrenched incumbent. A poll told me 20 percent of the voters would not vote for a woman, but I won. In 1974, I ran for governor, and polls showed generally the same statistic for a woman for that particular office. It seemed that by then voters would accept women for certain offices, such as the Legislature, but not in executive positions. Looking at statistics today about whether voters will vote for a woman for president is confusing as they show that generally fewer individual voters say they will not vote for a woman for president — but still about 20 percent think voters in general will not support a woman. Analysts surmise that voters have learned not to appear prejudiced in order to be “politically correct” but they think other people will not vote for a woman. This makes it hard to determine analytically whether women “fare” better in politics today.

Looking at statistics in another way, it is true there are more women in elective offices than there were in the 1960s — more in state legislatures, more as governors (8), more in the U.S. House of Representatives and more in the U.S. Senate (16). Certainly, there are more women in appointed positions in both state and federal government. Even with these gains, women are far from parity with men, and the numbers increase at a very slow rate. There are some statistics to show that the numbers of women in elective office have held steady for the past several years and that that is cause for concern. The obstacles for women are obvious in the presidential campaign this year where blatant sexism has been prevalent in the media and in voter demonstrations. The biggest obstacle of all is the lack of women in high offices to act as role models and mentors to younger women, and the fact that women in larger numbers must be in positions of power in order to move on up into the executive branches of government.

We must constantly work to get women into state legislatures and statewide offices in order to elect more governors, and we must work to get more women into the U.S. Senate if we are ever to see a woman elected president. They must start at an early age in order to progress through various political positions in order to gain the experience needed to be a governor or the president.

Q: Was your gender or your age a bigger barrier in the 1960s to going to law school and entering law?

A: Neither my gender nor age was a barrier to entering the particular law school I attended as it was a night law school in downtown Portland and was designed for people like me who worked and often were older. The place where both gender and age — it was difficult to determine which was the more offensive — was a factor when at age 39, I sought admission to the University of Oregon political science department to be a doctoral candidate. I was told it was age, but it was common knowledge that women were not accepted there for doctoral degrees, although I had completed my master’s degree in political science at the school.

Q: Much of your work as a legislator focused on women’s rights, but touched on other issues. What were you proudest of achieving as a legislator? Biggest disappointment?

A: Some of my work in the legislature focused on women’s rights, but I was considered a solid legislator on a broad range of issues. I have chosen to write about women’s issues in “With Grit and By Grace” because those issues have been generally overlooked in discussions and writings about the 1970s where the focus has been more on land use, environmental protection, consumer protection, opening up government to citizen participation, etc. But the women’s movement — and the legislation that was passed during that time — was an important part of making equality of opportunities a reality for women. That legislation, indeed, changed the lives of women who now participate more equally, and productively, in our society.

I am proud of much of the legislation I worked on as chairwoman of the Senate Consumer and Business Affairs Committee and as a member of the Ways and Means Committee as well. I served on the Senate Education Committee and was vice chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I am probably best known for saving Oregon’s famous “bottle bill” from the lobbying interests that opposed it and seeing that it was ultimately passed by the Senate and became law. As far as women’s issues are concerned, I am probably best known for introducing and helping pass a bill that decriminalized abortions in 1969. My greatest disappointment was the failure of my repeated efforts to get funding for kindergartens in our school system. I tried every session from 1965 through 1977, but it never got all the way through the legislative process while I was there. (NOTE: A 1981 law finally required districts to offer kindergarten.)

Q: What prompted you to run for governor in 1974? How did it feel, after your loss in the primary, to run a second statewide campaign in the same year for a different office?

A: During the 1973 legislative session speculation began about who would run for governor in 1974 as Tom McCall would not be able to run again. A likely Democratic candidate was former state Treasurer Bob Straub, but he had been out of office a few years and had run against Tom McCall for governor, but he was silent on whether he would seek the office again. The press began to suggest possible names, mine among them. Then political colleagues and friends began to encourage me to run in the Democratic primary. At the time, it looked like it might be a crowded field. When I began to get specific offers of help I began to consider it seriously, and by late fall of 1973 I had a good campaign staff and announced my intention to run. Later Bob Straub did get in the race and he won the nomination by a very small margin.

When former U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse died in the summer of 1974 (after my defeat for governor) while he was attempting to take back his seat in the U.S. Senate from Bob Packwood who had defeated Morse in 1968, I was named by the State Democratic Central Committee to take Morse’s place on the ballot. I had at first been ambivalent about running for the U.S. Senate. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be that far away from Oregon on a regular basis. But, on the other hand, I thought I had the best chance of anyone who was considering it to put on a good campaign and win. I had 84 days to switch from being a candidate for governor to winning a campaign for the U.S. Senate. The dynamics of the campaign were very different, including the issues to be discussed and the method of raising money to run the campaign, both of which made me rely more on contacts in Washington, D.C., than in Oregon.

It was a huge challenge, and the campaign was even more exhausting than the governor’s race. Our campaign made a fine showing, however, and it was down to the wire 10 days before the election, so my surveys showed. Bob Packwood ultimately won due to his heavy media coverage the last weekend and endorsements by major newspapers.

Q: Oregon’s appellate courts were all-male prior to your appointment to the Court of Appeals in 1977, and the Supreme Court in 1982. As the first woman on both, how did you make a difference?

A: There is no question I made a difference on both courts in terms of changing the attitude of the public and the personnel on both courts about the acceptance of women on the courts. That barrier had to be broken. As far as affecting the work of the courts, that is more difficult to determine. However, it is true that different people bring different talents and backgrounds to the court, and that is why we need more diversity in our court system. Mine was one of being a mother, grandmother, teacher, legislator and, of course, lawyer. With that experience I looked at some cases a bit differently than the men.

A few cases are described in “With Grit and By Grace,” in which I felt my influence as a woman helped decide the outcome. Probably the greatest influence was on other women lawyers, particularly those who argued cases before the courts, who saw me as a role model. After leaving the bench I was told often about how relieved women lawyers were to see a woman on the bench who they felt they could relate to. It made them more at ease and more comfortable when they appeared before the courts, and, most significantly, it encouraged more women to seek appointment and/or election to the Oregon appellate courts.

Note to readers: The following question was asked May 30, before Sen. Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination.

Q: You were on the platform when Hillary Clinton opened her Oregon presidential campaign April 5 in Hillsboro. Why do you support her? When do you think the ultimate political barrier will fall?

A: As this moment I am still hopeful Hillary Clinton will be named the Democratic nominee and, if so, I am certain she can beat John McCain in the fall. If that happens, the ultimate political barrier will have fallen. I support Senator Clinton because she is the best qualified candidate by reason of experience and knowledge of the political process that is necessary to enact the programs that she has proposed for our country. She is sound on the issues that face Americans and she is willing to take a strong stand in behalf of those issues. Her personality is one of determination, dedication, perseverance and tenacity — all prerequisites for skilled political leaders.

[From The Oregonian]

The autobiography of Betty Roberts, “With Grit and by Grace: Breaking Trails in Law and Politics,” (Oregon State University Press, $24.95 paperback, 288 pages) begins with a description of growing up in Texas in 1930s. Life was not easy. Sometimes there wasn’t enough to eat.

In 1942 Betty Cantrell met Bill Rice, a serviceman at an air base near Wichita Falls, Texas. He had been a banker in Oregon. He asked her to marry him. She couldn’t think of a good reason why she shouldn’t.

That’s how, after the war, Betty Rice became a banker’s wife in Klamath Falls, Lakeview, Gresham and La Grande, where with four children, two not yet school age, she became a college student and soon a divorcee.

Her second marriage was to Frank Roberts, a speech professor at Portland State College, who gave her his name and his assistance in a developing political career, but he didn’t really give up his bachelorhood. She had married Roberts for the same reason as Rice: “It had been the practical thing to do.” Only in her third marriage, to Keith Skelton, a fellow legislator, does Roberts speak of love.

Roberts tells her story of a political and legal career that spanned two decades. When she left the Oregon Supreme Court in 1986, she had been the court’s first woman justice as well as the first woman judge on the Oregon Court of Appeals.

In 1974 Roberts ran for governor and lost. After former U.S. Sen. Wayne Morse died during one of his comeback campaigns, Roberts quickly readjusted to run for the senate seat occupied by Bob Packwood.

Packwood won. Surprisingly, Roberts doesn’t mention her leadership in the removal of Packwood from the Senate after revelations about his philandering with just about anyone wearing a skirt. That story Roberts has left for Packwood to tell.

“With Grit and by Grace,” written with Gail Wells, describes Roberts’ career as a liberal feminist, always looking to advance the cause of women. That’s not entirely true. As a legislator Roberts was considered solid, well-versed on all political issues. Only in editing was her book reduced to one-third its original size, making it appear the feminist fire in the belly was her only driving force.

Her book is witty and provides a road map to all the Robertses in local politics. She tells of being introduced to Mary Wendy Roberts, a future state senator and labor commissioner who had been her stepdaughter for four years. They had never met.

She tells of trying to adapt to the male-dominated Court of Appeals under Judge Herb Schwab. He ran a court filled with people who didn’t much like talking to each other because they had run against one another in earlier political races. Talk about political tension! 
Douglas Yocom watched Roberts’ political career as a political and editorial writer for The Oregon Journal and The Oregonian. 

Oregon Women Lawyers Newsletter (PDF)